Creative Soul Projects
A home for the stories, experiments, and side-quests that shape Cultivated.
Creative Soul Projects is the creative sibling of Cultivated — my YouTube channel, my notebooks, my camera walks, and all the strange, playful, thoughtful projects that sit beneath the systems I now teach.
Some of these projects eventually become courses, products, or tools. (See the polished version in the Learn and Create section of the site).
Most begin as experiments — small acts of curiosity and craft that help me explore how ideas become valuable in the real world.
Over the years I’ve made things simply because they felt alive: travel guides, tiny books, podcasts, stationery experiments, workshops, and even full frameworks that started as sketches in a notebook.
This page collects them — the polished ones, the scrappy ones, the accidental ones — and what each taught me about creativity, communication, learning, and leadership.
How This Works
Each project is presented with four simple lenses:
What it is — the project in plain English
Why I made it — the spark or itch
What it taught me — the insight that shaped my systems
What it became — if it evolved into something more
The Projects
Creative Soul Projects – YouTube Channel
What it is:
A story-driven YouTube channel where I show the messy middle of turning ideas into something real — films, tools, stories, workshops, and creative process.
Why I made it:
To create a space where I show how ideas become valuable, instead of only teaching the frameworks behind them.
What it taught me:
That the soul behind the system matters. People connect to stories, not diagrams — and often the story is the clearer teacher.
What it became:
The creative spirit layer of Cultivated. Many of my frameworks and workshops were shaped here first.
Budapest: A Creative Soul Travel Guide
What it is:
A travel guide to Budapest — one of my favourite cities in Europe.
Why I made it:
To capture and share interesting places to visit, complete with a map guide and some photos from the trip. When I travel I love to wander and spend time noticing the city, and to reconnect with filmmaking/photography as a form of reflection.
I also wanted to explore using the tool Fold – it's a great way to read guides, insights and information.
What it taught me:
Ideas grow when you give yourself space to notice. A city is best seen by wandering and noticing - and photography helps me learn to notice. The art of noticing is also the art of leadership.
What it became:
A fact filled guide to a great city.
Parent Car Scene
What it is:
A simple, human magazine that documents my love of cars – and what they mean to me.
Why I made it:
This was an idea that couldn't come to life in its original form. This is quite common. So, I pivoted this idea away from being a "meetup" into a magazine. The idea now lives in a tangible form, and not in my head or a backlog somewhere.
What it taught me:
I learned that not all ideas want to become the form you first imagine. That's not to say they never will, but sometimes, they need morphing into some other form, some other medium, some other expression to share with the world.
What it became:
A fun use of a few hours of my time – I learned how to pull it together in Affinity Publisher, I played with colours, layouts and words. It became a magazine that expressed my idea perfectly well – even though it wasn't the medium I first imagined.
👉 Download the Parent Car Scene PDF directly here.
Lockdown Isolation Book
What it is:
A small experimental book created during the lockdown — part diary, part observational thoughts, part survival through creativity.
Why I made it:
Because creativity kept me grounded. Making something small each day felt like reclaiming agency.
What it taught me:
Constraints fuel creativity. This book later shaped the way I design micro-exercises in workshops.
What it became:
A quiet artefact of a strange time — and a philosophy I still teach: make something small, often.
👉 Download the Lockdown Isolation book here.
Stationery Freaks Podcast
What it is:
A podcast I co-host with Helen Lisowski about stationery, creativity, tools, and the joy of making things with your hands.
Why I made it:
Because stationery has always been my way into thinking, clarity, and creativity — and because Helen and I share a love for the tactile side of ideas.
What it taught me:
That community matters. People don’t just want tools — they want stories and shared enthusiasm.
What it became:
A long term creative collaboration and one of the origins of the Creative Soul Projects ethos.
👉 Listen to the Stationery Freaks podcast here.
Idea → Value System
What it is:
A complete system for turning ideas into meaningful value — the backbone of all my work with teams and leaders.
Why I made it:
To simplify the messy middle of going from idea → investment → activity → action → ship → value.
What it taught me:
That creativity and systems are not opposites — they rely on each other.
What it became:
A book, a video course, a workshop suite, and one of the core Cultivated offerings.
👉 Check out the idea → value system video course here
Zero to Keynote
What it is:
A practical guide to crafting and delivering a high-value keynote without the chaos. Available in print and digital.
Why I made it:
Because every keynote I delivered started the same way: an idea, a story, a structure, and a system. I wanted to demystify that.
I also wanted to self publish another print book – my first being Take a Day Off. I wanted to learn more about designing and publishing a book – to hone my skills in desktop publishing, something I used to do a lot of when I was younger.
What it taught me:
Public speaking is a creative act — not a performance of information.
What it became:
A book, a coaching model, and one of the most helpful tools for leaders who want to communicate better.
👉 Find out more about Zero to Keynote here.
Workshop Mastery
What it is:
A guide to designing and running effective workshops that actually lead to insight, alignment, and action.
Why I made it:
Because I spent years fixing poor workshops — and wanted to help others avoid the same traps. My workshops constantly won awards. I figured it wasn't my winning charm, so I deconstructed each workshop, captured my own reflections after each one, learned what worked and what did not, researched heavily – and pulled this all together to help others master teaching through workshops.
What it taught me:
A workshop is a designed experience. It’s communication, psychology, and facilitation all at once. It's a place to learn and that learning, from the student's perspective, is what matters most.
What it became:
A book, a training package, and a core part of how I teach communication inside organisations.
👉 Find out more about the digital download book Workshop Mastery
30 Days of Creativity – Creative Soul Projects
What it is:
A 30-day creativity guide originally published on LinkedIn, inviting daily prompts, reflections and mini-actions — ultimately an experiment in creative momentum. It failed on LinkedIn and became this guide instead.
Why I made it:
I wanted to explore the idea of creativity. One day on a train I wrote down a big list of ideas about creativity. Then got to work turning these ideas into a pop up newsletter for LinkedIn.
The plan was to publish publicly and build the rhythm in real time. Turned out that LinkedIn was a monumentally bad platform of choice for this idea.
It then morphed, like many of my ideas, into a new medium. This Fold Guide, or a PDF available on this blog post.
What it taught me:
That ideas are fragile in public form. The experiment revealed how the medium, audience expectations and timing all shape whether a project sticks. It reminded me that failure is often informative, not just disappointing.
What it became:
A ‘failed’ LinkedIn experiment — yet one of the richest learning experiences. The guide now lives as part of the Creative Soul Projects and Cultivated archive and feeds into my teaching: we build the habit before we build the output.
👉 Read the 30 Days of Creativity on Fold
Decay, Renewal & the Places We Leave Behind
What it is:
A photo-essay exploring abandoned and decaying buildings — the textures, the stories they hold, and the question of whether we should restore, repurpose, or simply let them go.
Why I made it:
I’ve always been drawn to the quiet dignity of old structures. Photographing them became a way to ask: What do we keep? What do we renew? And how do we decide? This was as much about design and regeneration as it was about photography.
What it taught me:
That decay has its own kind of wisdom. Buildings, like systems, show us where energy once flowed — and where it no longer does. This project deepened my philosophy around regeneration, creativity, and organisational change: not everything should be saved, but everything deserves to be understood.
What it became:
A standalone creative study. Elements of it eventually influenced my regenerative design thread, my workshops on noticing, and the way I think about legacy systems in organisations.
👉 Download the Decay | Repurpose PDF here